


Waiting for a Star to Fall

by BeautifulLife



Category: A Star is Born (2018)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 07:15:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16403780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulLife/pseuds/BeautifulLife
Summary: In the eight years since Jack died, he’s never missed a show. No matter what album she’s promoting, there’s always that acoustic mini-set in the middle, where she brings the audience to tears with “I’ll Never Love Again,” then takes a 10-minute break to change costumes while they sniffle.At a crossroads in her career, Ally Maine takes on a Jackson Maine tribute project that means confronting buried feelings -- and gets a job offer that has her rethinking her views on what it means to be a musician.





	Waiting for a Star to Fall

“It’s my most authentic album yet.”

Ally Maine’s deep gaze into the eyes of interviewers is as famous as it is automatic. They always remark on it. They always fall for it.

She can tell by the dilation of Lance Maxwell’s pupils that he’s fallen for it again, and he’ll get half a paragraph out of her vulnerability and the exact shade that the restaurant lights turn her hazel eyes.

She runs through the usual talking points while letting him eat most of the _foie gras torchon_. She wrote every song—of course. It’s about fame, it’s about art, it’s about life as an independent woman. It’s inspired by the orphans she visited in Saigon on her last tour.

When Maxwell writes his article, there’ll be a paragraph on the effortlessness of her flowered dress and casual striped sweater, and how her trademark auburn hair glows against the tasteful greiges of Gwen Butcher Shop. Depending how mellow he is, she’ll be either an “old soul” at ease in the art deco surroundings, or a “timeless waif.”

“I’m recording one last song this week, at Westlake Studios’ famous Studio B.” Ally flashes a smile at the waiter who refills her water glass. How she takes her water with cucumber (a chunk, not a slice)—and how she hasn’t touched alcohol since Jack died—will also thrill the readers of _Vanity Fair._

“Interscope’s been giving you trouble over the first single, eh?”

There’s no way to deny that rumor and be believed, so Ally leans forward, widening her eyes and letting her lips part. The blush rising above Maxwell’s contoured stubble tells her when he’s primed to listen.

“It’s a very special song that came to me while I was waiting for a meeting with the label suits.”

“I didn’t think A&R kept a star like you waiting.”

“Maybe I was running early.” She runs a finger around the rim of her water glass. “I told them it had to be on the record, that it tied everything together perfectly and really. . . just spoke what’s in my heart when I think about how I got here. We recorded it with the same piano Adele used for ‘Someone Like You.’”

Maxwell leans forward, licking his lips. “Is it about Jackson Maine?”

“Isn’t everything?”

***

In the eight years since Jack died, he’s never missed a show. No matter what album she’s promoting, there’s always that acoustic mini-set in the middle, where she brings the audience to tears with “I’ll Never Love Again,” then takes a 10-minute break to change costumes while they sniffle.

“Shallow” is always the final song of the final encore.

Tim Manelean, her lead guitarist and concertmaster, once convinced her on a 50-minute secret show at Hotel Café to leave out both songs.

She ended up singing them in the parking lot at midnight, for twenty fans who held up their lighters and sang along.

When video of _that_ hit one million views and made a YouTube star of the fan who shot it, Ally promised she’d never leave those songs out of her sets again.

***

_In a trendy “meat market” known as much for its flattering lighting as its strip steak, Ally Maine’s floral dress clings to the illusion of youth, while the striped sweater over it tones with the cucumber in her trademark water—she hasn’t touched alcohol since Jackson Maine’s death—and short-circuits any curiosity about whether her arms have lost the shapely muscles that were featured in her last tours. If there are lines at the corners of her mesmerizing eyes—jade at rest, golden when she smiles—they are concealed by flawlessly natural make-up that contrasts with the blazing artificiality of her auburn hair._

“I hate him,” Ally tells Charlie. The floppy mop of a dog raises his head from its resting place on her feet, sighs, and lowers it again.

A year ago, Charlie would have been up on the sofa beside her, nestled against the Navajo-blanket pillow. She kept meaning to train him not to sleep on the furniture, and then old age did it for her, and she aches a little at no longer having to say “Chaaaarlie, who said you could be on the sofa?”

Nobody knows she has a Charlie-voice, a squishy muppety sort of voice, in which ‘he’ used to answer: “Daddy says I could.”

***

 _He(art) History_ opens at number one of the Billboard 200, but the reviews make Ally wince until she finds an online bingo-card generator. _Self-indulgent. Pretentious. Repetitive. Undercooked. Overproduced._ BINGO!

She sends a link to her dad, who doesn’t find it funny but plays it with his friends anyway.

The lead single, “Ovation,” peaks at 37 on the Hot 100. Chatter in the industry is that after the paid campaign where iHeart stations played it every hour, its spins dropped so fast, it set a record for failure.

“Streaming’s what matters these days,” her manager Rez tells her. He tapdances a medley of statistics from Spotify and Digital Music News and Next Big Sound. Ally nods, but she knows that one million streams on Spotify are nothing when this year’s big stars are racking up 10 million or more.

When the music press tries to drum up an old rivalry between her and Kitty Parley, Ally posts on Instagram a video of herself rocking out to Kitty’s latest release. They’ve met only briefly, at award shows, but Ally’s afraid of turning into someone who begrudges another musician’s success.

Kitty’s album peaks at number 52, despite a top-10 single (the song Ally thinks is the weakest on the album, but A&R would ask what makes her think she knows), and the faux-feud subsides in favor of discussion of whether one or both is past her prime.

Ally tunes that out by rehearsing for her tour. The dance routines feel a little more onerous every year, but that’s got to be because the difficulty rises with rising fan expectations.

She rehearses, she works with her personal trainer, she argues about the lighting design and costumes for the tour. What else can she do?

***  
“You could judge _Sing For Your Life,”_ Rez says. He’s making grilled cheese in Jack’s kitchen while Ally sketches a show concept scaled down for the smaller venues her people think this album can support.

“I’m not judging some covers contest.”

“Why not?”

“It’s fake. You’re taking these people from nowhere and turning them into pop stars because they have big voices and the ability to swallow gross bugs. They haven’t paid their dues.”

Rez _looks_ at her as he slides her sandwich onto a plate. He’s more comfortable in this sunny, ill-organized kitchen than any of the boyfriends she’s brought home—fourteen according to the gossip press, more like five by her own count—but then, he’s stuck around longer, too.

“Jack’s fans could have hated me. I could have been a flop on the road with him. It wasn’t automatic fame. I _worked_ for it.”

He shrugs and turns away to start another sandwich.

“Sure, I lucked into attention from a big star. But look how things turned out.”

“You deserved it. Someone would have discovered you eventually.” Rez’s tone is neutral, but somehow his back exudes reproach.

“Maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn’t. The thing is, I had something to say. I wasn’t singing covers on YouTube or on the TV or whatever.”

The silence stretches, supported by sizzling and punctuated by a bird call. In all these years, she’s never known what kind of bird nests in the trees outside Jack’s house.

“Covers in a drag bar aren’t the same thing. It was a classic. Not me mimicking the latest pop hit. I put my own spin on it.”

“Have you checked out the covers of your new songs?”

“No. I’m not interested in five bajillion dreamers trying to borrow my voice instead of finding their own.”

“You should. It won’t take you long this time.”

The colored pencil in her hand snaps, leaving a trail of red across the page. “I’m still not judging a stupid singing contest.”

***

What she’s doing—once the tour ends its year of smaller-than-expected venues, Groupon ticket offers, meet-and-greets with fans who pronounce her name wrong and fans whose names she knows as well as her own, reviews that gush and reviews that get snooty, and endless questions about whether she’s past her prime—is a tribute album of Jack’s songs.

His publisher is more than willing to cut a deal for a tenth deathiversary album. The spike in revenue from his tragic death is years in the rear view mirror, and his catalog hasn’t gotten much action for sync rights in a couple years.

The plan is to record each song as a duet with a different artist from Jack’s country roots, with the proceeds to go to a slate of addiction treatment organizations.

When word gets out in Nashville, Rez’s in-box fills and overflows. The project is a potential career boost if you’re opening at Third and Linsley or even if you’re headlining there.

***

“I should probably say I know his music really well, but that’d be a lie,” Addison Flyte announces from the chair where she’s sitting in Jack’s living room, cradling a guitar on the lap of her vintage-style little flowered dress with its girly white collar.

She dips her head as she says it, so that both her long lashes and a stray strand of golden hair hide whatever expression’s in her eyes. Ally’s urge to punch her for _not appreciating Jack_ doesn’t precisely dissipate, but it’s cushioned in the effort to not laugh.

Also, Charlie is drooling on Addison’s Mary Janes, so it’d be awkward if she stomped out of this supposedly informal meeting to supposedly discuss which song the world’s most famous pop star would grace with her presence.

“Why’d you sign up?”

That pushes Addison’s chin up and her blue eyes wide open. Ally wonders, with a pang of guilt at her own frivolity, how Addison gets that _perfect_ bright red lip coverage with none on her teeth.

“It’s important. . . I mean, his legacy. . . the roots of country rock. . .” The eyelashes dip again. “Look, my press is shit since I broke up with the Queen of England’s grandson, and I need something positive and unselfish and authentic pretty much right now. And Jackson Maine. . . tragedy. . . a great talent lost to his demons too early. . . it’s perfect. And it was this or an eating disorder benefit, and if I do that, they’ll all decide I have one.”

“I see.” If Ally keeps her breathing steady, she can feel exactly neutral about this. She’s done it for interviewers she despised. She’s done it for label suits. She’s done it for Jack. “What song is it you’re known for, again?”

Addison Flyte laughs. “I deserved that. I’m sorry. I should have at least listened to his records before coming here.”

Ally pushes herself off the sofa. Her hands want to form fists, but the girl who punched a pushy fan is years in the past and anyway, she needs her hands to play piano.

“You can get out,” she says. “Or you can listen to Jack’s records with me.”

Three hours later, it’s dark, they’ve worked backward to two albums before Jack’s debut (the one he doesn’t talk about that sold 10,000 copies despite critics’ gushing over it), and Addison is lying on the floor with her head on Charlie’s back. Ally, bringing another round of iced tea, lowers herself onto the rug and stretches out.

“What was it like?” Addison asks.

“What was what like?”

“Dating someone famous.”

“Like you don’t know?”

“I don’t. Everyone I’ve dated has been less famous than me.”

Ally mentally riffs through her memory of paparazzi photos. Collateral relative of a martyred President. . . yep, less famous than Addison. Rising movie star. . . absolutely. Third most successful member of the decade’s biggest boyband. . . still less successful than Addison. Grandson of the Queen of England. . .

“What about Prince Jerry?”

“The protocal at family dinners was a bitch, but he doesn’t really have fans like we have fans. I mean, you get screaming girls because _prince,_ right? But it’s not the same. If I’d dated an actual heir, though. . .”

“Would you want to be Queen of England?”

“Probably not. The hats are cool, but it’s the sort of thing you want to write a song about, not actually _do_.”

Charlie snores. Ally is conscious of Addison’s flowery perfume, mixing with the familiar wood and leather and dog scents of Jack’s living room. She breathes shallowly, so she doesn’t have to notice.

“Which is your favorite Disney princess?”

“Merida,” Addison says. “I try to manipulate all those ‘choose six fall foods and we’ll name your favorite princess’ Buzzfeed quizzes to get her, but half the time I end up with Ariel because I like fish. The message that girls should have courage to forge their own path is awesome.”

Ally turns her head and meets Addison’s bright blue eyes.

“My high-profile dating life doesn’t mean I’m looking for a man to save me,” Addison says.

Ally listens for the guitar riff that stretches endlessly off one song, and then the rising drum beat of another. “Dad taught me to sing all of Cinderella’s songs. There’s video of five-year-old me belting ‘When I Wish Upon a Star.’”

She suddenly doesn’t know where her hands belong, so she folds them across her stomach. “It was like that. I was wisked out of this. . . I was a waitress. And suddenly I wasn’t. I was on the road with a big star. I’d play every night in front of thousands of cheering people, and then I’d go to bed and the big star would tell me that I was beautiful and perfect and talented and destined to make it big.”

Ally takes a breath so deep, her lungs ache. “All I had to do was be talented and kind and brave. I wished, and it was there. Like fairy dust. And then I was talented, but I wasn’t kind enough or brave enough, and I got to keep the cheering crowds, but I lost Jack.”

“If you’d known how it would be—”

“Would I have given up the good times to avoid how it came out?”

 _Of course not_ is the correct answer, but it sticks in Ally’s throat. She knows all the platitudes about how everything is part of who you are—she wrote variants on them into a song on _He(art) History_ that the critic with the _Rolling Stone_ devoted 500 words to trashing—and while they seemed authentic up until five minutes ago, she’s not so sure about them now.

“Let’s order Chinese and try working up an arrangement of ‘Why and Why Not’,” she says instead.

***

Kyle Townsend is a complete professional who shows up at the Westlake Studios ready to play. Rez reports that when he exchanged texts with Kyle, the New Zealand-born country star quoted Jack’s lyrics, offered an opinion on which songs would fit his voice and style, and agreed to “Diggin’ My Grave” when Rez suggested it.

Each producer is taking care of laying down the drum and bass lines ahead of these sessions. Kyle’s guitar track goes smoothly in three takes. Then it’s time for vocals.

It’s the first time she’s sung this song with someone who isn’t Jack. With Jack, it was fun. They were in love. They didn’t _mean it_. Without Jack—

“It’s okay,” Kyle says the third time her throat closes and her voice dies to a strained whimper.

Ally shakes her head. “I’m fine.”

“We can record our vocal parts separately, if that’s easier. I’m probably throwing you off—”

“No. I want the spontaneity of having us both here.”

The warm wood and stone walls might as well have _but there’s no spontaneity, you’re screwing up_ spraypainted across them.

“Don’t look at me while you sing,” Kyle says. Behind him, she can see the producer nodding.

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. You’re used to singing this while making love to Jack, and every time you look at me, I’m not Jack and you don’t want to make love to me. Let’s arrange the mics so you don’t have to look at me.”

She needs only two takes, once they do it that way, which means she has to thank Kyle profusely. “I’m usually more professional—”

“I’ve seen you on stage. You’re fantastic. My wife loves your album.”

“You’re kidding.” If he is, the sincerity in his pale blue eyes is a pretty convincing fake. Ally suppresses a laugh at the vision of Kyle’s movie-star wife bopping around the kitchen to ‘Ovation,’ and that’s all that stops her from choking on what he says next.

“You should join me judging on _Sing For Your Life._ You’d be terrific.”

“That singing show—”

“You’re funny, you’re expressive, you know music, you’re famous enough to give the show some panache—”

“And I need a comeback.”

“And you’ll feel _good_ about helping young talent get a start. You know what it’s like to have your life changed by getting your music heard.”

“I slept with the right man.” That blurts out before she can edit it. Ally is horrified with herself. A few music critics have said this of her, but she’s _never_ said it of herself. She _deserved_ her success, and Jack just. . . recognized that.

“There’s a middle seat at the judging table looking for someone to fill it. Can I tell you a secret?”

The answer to that question is always _yes._ And it’s not like the husband of Daniella Childs is going to confess some embarrassing secret passion.

“Yes.”

Kyle Townsend’s gaze settles on the tip of her nose, which convinces her of his sincerity more than if he’d forced eye contact. “There’ve been times when I’ve doubted my music. Even when I’ve had an album doing great. . . you just do, y’know?”

“I know.”

“Being part of helping these kids get a break. . . it helps. They believe so hard in what they’re doing, that the music is worth struggling for. . . I go home feeling kind of selfish for doubting, but also glad that I was able to help them toward their dreams.”

***

Ally’s first day at the judging table, two girls announce that she’s their hero, one boy too young to shave brings flowers and sings “I’ll Never Love Again” to her, and the producer announces _this makes great TV_ six times.

She giggles at Kyle Townsend’s jokes, manages not to finish soul legend Briarly Benson’s sentences, snacks on carrot sticks, and keeps count of the _great TV_ remarks.

One: a young girl dedicating her song to her mom in the military, followed by surprise entrance of mom.

Two: the boy who sings to her.

Three: a man far too old for the show, rapping about Amazon and YouTube.

Fourth: a girl with a pretty but undistinguished voice, who goes off on Kyle when he says she needs to take another year to find her own point of view.

Fifth: a man in his twenties who tells about singing to his cows, then gives a heartbreaking rendition of a John Legend hit.

Sixth: a young man who sings with great confidence but totally off-key—and bursts into tears when he’s not advanced to the next round.

 _Say something about how he needs to find a new career,_ the producer’s voice whispers in her earpiece. _Be snarky. It’s great TV._

That insinuating voice has been with her all day. She obeys its commands because they’re the professionals and she’s the newbie.

“You need to explore careers where you have some actual talent,” Ally hears herself say.

***

The studio in Nashville has blue walls, and the gal meeting her there is so darned perky that Ally feels like she’s choked on a gobstopper.

“Arlene Jane,” the collaborator says. “This is _such_ an honor. I’ve been listening to Jackson Maine’s music since I was a baby and I covered ‘Too Far Gone’ in my shows a whole bunch and I cannot _tell_ you how his music got me through when my family had problems, and it had a lot of problems. I’m so thrilled to work with you.”

“Me too,” Ally says with her biggest smile because she’s still lost in the middle of that sentence, but this Arlene Jane means well.

She’s blonde, of course—Ally’s rapidly concluding _all_ female country singers under age 30 are blonde—with a button nose, a T-shirt advertising a 1990s cartoon, ripped jeans, and the overall look of a pink rose that’s just survived a rainstorm.

“Are we ready?” the producer calls.

Ally eyes Arlene, who is eyeing her back.

“I kind of come on strong like a PSA, don’t I?” Arlene says.

“You sound like a fan.”

“That’s a compliment.” Arlene sounds so unsure that Ally questions her own motives in saying it. She _wants_ her collaborators to love Jack’s music. Doesn’t she?

“How did you get so into ‘Too Far Gone’? Rez didn’t say.”

“We can start any time,” the producer says.

“I want some rapport,” Ally tells him. She plops down on the blue leather—well, probably vinyl—sofa and pats the seat beside her. “Arlene, what speaks to you in ‘Too Far Gone’?”

“My daddy.” The younger woman picks at a hangnail on plump pink hands. “Oh, this ain’t some surprise revelation that I’m Jackson Maine’s long-lost love child or anything. That’d be awkward as a pig in pajamas. My daddy was a drunk. It’s not a secret. I wrote a song about it, and he’s doing better now. He used to talk like that, though, like Mama and I could save him if we loved him enough.”

“He chose to drink,” Ally says, the way she’s learned, the way she’s repeated for nine years now.

“He chose it, but he said he loved us so much that he’d try to change for us. And someone who says that has to love you _a lot._ I always felt like if I deserved that kind of love, it’d work, He’d stop drinking for me, like he said he would.”

Ally swallows so hard that she almost chokes on her own spit.

“The reason I picked that song. . . he wrote it for you, right?”

“Yes.”

“So you know what it’s like to be _cherished_ like that. It’s all a lie, that he’s gonna change for you, ’cause what’s driving him to drink isn’t you and isn’t something you can cure, but that feeling of being loved, of being so damn precious that you’re the center of someone’s world, is kind of addictive itself. I figured if you lived with it, if you got through it, so could I. Not because it was easy for you, I don’t mean that, but because someone else had, so it must be possible. Does that make any sense?”

If she speaks, she’s going to overflow with tears that taste like bile. Ally reaches an arm around Arlene Jane’s shoulder and pulls her into a half-hug because it’s the closest she can come to saying she understands any of it.

***

That night, Ally sits at a tiny table in a club called The Basement because it’s in one, listening to bands who’ll probably never get a record deal and wondering if she’s genuinely more deserving than any of them.

In her hotel room, afterward, she writes a song that starts angry and turns into a love song.

In her hotel room, when it’s so late that Nashville’s skyline has gone to sleep, she writes a song that starts as a love song and turns angry.

***

 _It’ll be great TV,_ she hears in her earpiece.

 _Sing For Your Life_ auditions are in New York City this week, in a hotel ballroom that, like every hotel ballroom where they’ve filmed so far, has exactly no local character at all.

Next up is a boyfriend-girlfriend duo. Ally’s already been told there is no way the producers will advance both of them to the live rounds. _We want conflict. Jealousy. Human emotions in play. It’ll be great TV._

The girl is prettier than she’s allowing herself to be. The guy is a guy: tall, lanky, dressed as if he works on the docks so he probably doesn’t, with a nose so long and straight that Ally runs a finger down her own before she realizes what she’s done.

“I’m Laurel C.,” the girl says, straightening her guitar strap. “I’m a singer-songwriter from Providence, Rhode Island. I’m going to sing ‘This Big Break-up, We Won’t Ever Ever Make Up,’ by Addison Flyte.”

 _Sing something else,_ Ally wants to say. It’s Addison Flyte’s most frivolous song, halfway to being a novelty hit, and when Laurel takes her hands off the guitar to _clap_ in time _won’t ever ever make up_ , Ally wants to cringe.

Laurel’s voice is sweet, which is part of the problem, and on a song like this, there’s no way to tell if there’s any range. _Sing something else._

Ally feels like her hands are on crooked when she applauds Laurel’s song. There are a million sweet-voiced singer-songwriters out there, and Ally has seen several hundred of them personally from behind this table or one identical to it in another city.

“My name is Jason Schiavone, and I’m a singer-songwriter from Pawtucket, Rhode Island.”

 _Act infatuated,_ whispers the voice in her ear. _This one’s heartthrob bait._

“And what are you doing to sing, Jason?”

“’Perfect,’ by Ed Sheeran.”

He plays with his eyes shut, which isn’t going to be great TV, but there’s a tone to his tenor that aches and needs and cherishes and bleeds raw sincerity, so that the hairs on Ally’s neck rise and she wants to put more than the width of the table between her and Jason Schiavone.

So she watches his girlfriend watch him. There is a warmth and a tenderness in Laurel’s expression that Ally can _feel_ in her own memories of watching Jack play. _He_ cast the light that gave her, Ally, that glow. And when she sat at the piano, he took on that glow from her light.

Ally applauds at the end of Jason’s song because she has to. He holds out an arm to bring Laurel to his side for the judge’s decision. When she comes to him, she stops just far enough away that the embrace is tenuous. She’s already separate, braced for denial, while he’s trying to hold them together.

_These two are young and happy and have the same goals, with their whole lives ahead together. And we’re going to threaten that for the sake of ‘good TV.’_

“Laurel,” Briarly Benson says, “the best part of his audition was how you look at him. Unfortunately, it was also the best part of yours. I’m going to have to say no to both of you.”

The corners of Laurel’s mouth turn down, then she forces a smile. Jason stares directly at the judges as he gives her a little inward shake.

“Laurel, that was a weak song choice that didn’t showcase your vocals.” That’s what the producers want Ally to say, and she says it. “There’s a quality to you, though, and I think you deserve another chance. I’m going to say yes.”

Kyle Townsend shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Laurel, I have to say no. Jason, I’m going to give you a yes.”

An awkward silence stretches like Laurel’s forced smile until the voice in Ally’s ear says _The tension waiting for you to give Jason his second yes is great, but we need to get on with it._

If she says no, these two young musicians have a good story to tell and a future together. If she says yes, this moment will be something they have to survive.

Jason Schiavone is more than good enough for the show, but if he’s that good, then she’s not doing him a disservice in giving him a no. There are lots of opportunities out there—

_What if it’s all luck and being somewhere at the right time?_

_What if I wasn’t that great or that inevitable? What if Jack hadn’t given me a boost?_

_What if everyone had kept denying my talent, telling me there’d be some other opportunity down the road?_

“Yes,” Ally says. “Jason, you’re going to Hollywood.”

His smile strains as if he’s holding it back. But it’s Laurel’s struggle to smile at all that makes Ally feel like she’s just strangled a newborn.

In her hotel room that night, she’ll justify the decision half a dozen ways, until she realizes that needing to justify it means she already believes she called it wrong.

***

“It took me fifteen years to be an overnight success,” Tommy Opperman says with a chuckle. He’s got a cowboy hat, a beard, a belly, and the genial look of a bear who found honey in Nashville.

The guitar track he lays down is so good on its own that Ally asks for the song to be mixed without drums and bass—just the guitar and their two voices, pure and lonely in the Tennessee night.

***

Music Row by night is a cacophany of bars and cowboy clubs. By day, it looks half-asleep, wearing weathered brick like pajamas.

In a store that sells sixteen kinds of refrigerator magnets shaped like guitars, Ally buys a pillow embroidered with a Dolly Parton saying.

_If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving a new one._

It’s only after she gets back to her hotel that she realizes it’s pink. And has sequins. Nothing in Jack’s house is remotely compatible with pink and sequins.

***

“Hell, we all partied.” Jamie Milton tugs at his cowboy hat. “People didn’t make the fuss they do now.”

His last hit was in 1982. He's on his fourth—or maybe fifth—wife now. Ally gave up on keeping track when she realized every wife was blonde and twenty years old at the wedding.

“It was on my fourth tour. . . no, maybe my fifth. . .  we were out in California and in 1976, let me tell you, it was wild. Girls all over the place. They all thought they could sing, too. So the ones who were good in bed, you’d maybe take in front of a producer, see what’s what. Most of ’em weren’t good for much beyond playing a tambourine and goin’ _ooh ooh baby,_ and I promise that’s not a euphemism, except when it is.”

“Did you want any kind of vocal warm-up?” Ally asks.

“Figured you were one of those, except Jack up and took you serious, like.”

“Yes, he did, and so did my manager Rez and so did Interscope.” The words come out clipped with rage. “So did music critics, so did radio programmers. So I guess Jack had great judgment.”

“Oh, lady—didn’t mean to offend. I was just shootin’ from the hip. Old sons of bitches like me rattle on about the good ol’ days—”

Ally has not spent a decade in the music industry without knowing how to soothe down posturing men. She can say the right words to make Jamie Milton feel good about himself—and she doesn’t want to.

“I think you’re not the right person for this track after all,” she says. “Thanks for your time. I’ll be going now.”

And she goes, without looking back.

Only she knows if, or how often, she checked her texts to see if anyone intended to yell at her or persuade her.

***

In Chicago, Ally is late to sit at the judging table. She pleads traffic because it’s too complicated to explain she was sitting in a Steinway store, composing a new song at an ebony baby grand.

Time enough for explanations when it shows up on YouTube.

***

“That phrase wants more emphasis on the _old_ ,” Travis Bones says. “Try it again.”

They’ve sung this phrase with emphasis on _maybe, time,_ and _let_. Ally feels a sinking certainty that it’ll want a try at emphasizing _ways_ and _die,_ too.

Singer-guitarist-producer Travis Bones has a reputation for nuance and excellence. His blue-shirt, blue-jeans, ball-cap demeanor hides the soul of the pickiest bastard Ally has ever worked with “What we want, I think, is to emphasize a different word in each line. The song shifts in meaning as it passes by, like train cars passing by.”

“It’s not that kind of song. It’s supposed to. . . to gather power from repetition. It’s not repeating if you keep diddling with the emphasis.”

“Repetition, variety. . . two sides of the same coin. Now let’s try it with a little more pain in your tone on the third syllable.”

For the first hour, Ally tries to hold onto the meaning in the song, the way she and Jack sang.

For the second hour, she simply tries not to strangle Travis Bones. He’s unperturbed. Every stress, ever breath, must be just-so.

At the end of the fourth hour, she’s so numb that she feels no connection to the voice on the track that’s played back to her. It’s beautiful and precise, like a stained-glass window, but the self it reflects back to her is unrecognizable, distorted and re-colored, with no Jack beside her.

Listening, she cries anyway, at the endless cycle of pleas for change that roll into one another but lead only in a circle.

 _Jack never seriously intended to change._ It comes to her in a flash between two repetitions-that-aren’t-repetitions of _maybe it’s time to let the old ways die._ He flirted with change, he courted change, he asked her to motivate his change. . . but change was always, over and over, a _maybe it’s time_ for him. Not _it’s time right now,_ but _maybe_. Or maybe not.

***

“It wasn’t until I heard it like it _wasn’t mine_ that I felt it,” Ally tells Addison and Arlene. They’re in the studio of Addison’s Nashville mansion: Arlene curled on a fainting couch beneath a hanging of a unicorn, Addison in a rocker with a white cat risking its tail underneath, and Ally pacing the faded oriental rug.

“This time, you heard it like a fan,” Arlene offers. Ally waits for the usual torrent of words, but it doesn’t come.

“I was always Jack’s biggest fan.”

“You were Jackson Maine’s wife,” Addison says briskly. “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t have to be married to know it’s different.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t realize that he didn’t want to change,” Ally says, probably for the fifth time.

“He did.” Arlene knots her plump fingers. “Daddy used to talk just like that. Change was always gonna happen and he was eager for it, _he was,_ but then the next day, it was all back to exactly the same. It was like he was missing a piece of himself that’d let him _do_ it.”

“And yet he expected me to quit my job, change my life, follow him to the ends of the earth, negotiate the music industry, marry him, manage his illness. . . _why was all the change on me_?”

Arlene just shakes her head. Ally wants very badly to punch something—not Arlene, not Addison, not Jack, _never Jack,_ just _something._

“We should have a drink,” Addison says. There’s an entire bar in the studio, hidden behind louvered doors. “Ally, you need a drink.”

“I haven’t had a drink since Jack died.”

“Then you should.” Maybe she feels the way Ally’s gaze is boring into the back of her perfect golden-blonde head. Maybe the silence just feels too much like a gathering thunderstorm. “Ally, you’re not required to live your life as the guardian of Jack’s sobriety.”

“I don’t want to end up like him.”

“Fair enough, but was there ever any sign that you can’t handle taking one drink and calling it a night?”

Rummaging back through memories leaves her feeling like a pile of autumn leaves about to blow away. Her hand is shaking when Addison puts a tumbler in it.

“Whiskey. You’ll drink it slow.”

“I wasn’t a better person than Jack.” That just comes out, before she’s done more than smell the whiskey. “I could end up—”

“Oh, can it. Addison, make mine just orange juice, please. Ally, alcoholism is a genetic thing, it’s a messed-up brain thing, it’s not a thing you can _catch_ like a cold.”

“I just don’t want to fall apart.” That has the half-honest, three-quarters-lie feel of something she’s saying to make them back off, and to convince herself.

“Then we’ll do something fun. Arlene, what’s your favorite of my love songs?”

“The one about Romeo and Juliet.”

“Okay, then. We’re going to do a dance remix of it.”

It’s cheap to laugh when Addison speeds up her vocals to chipmunk shrillness, but it’s also easy, and so Ally does. Sweet mandolin gives way to synths, drums pick up a notch.

“Not the one about Daddy,” Arlene says when it’s her turn. “I’d feel like I was making fun of him.”

Ally’s stomach trembles at the thought of remixing “I’ll Never Love Again” this way. It’ll be good for her, it’ll distance her from it, these are her friends, she’ll emerge the other side unhurt—

“Don’t even think of that ballad you do every show,” Addison says. “That’s not _your_ song. We’re remixing one _you_ wrote.”

“Every one of my singles _has_ dance remixes.”

“Then pick a deep track. ‘Me and You.’ That’s my favorite of your songs—”

“You have a favorite Ally Maine song?”

“I made sure I did in case anyone asked. Deep track shows I listened to a full album.” Addison’s perfectly painted grin is exceedingly perky.

Somewhere in the whiskey and the evening and the noise, Ally gets interested in the choice of this beat and that beat. Arlene starts to sing. _You said you loved me enough to change, but what you loved was my face when you promised me to change._ Addison picks up a guitar. The words tangle, simplify, reshape into verses of sorrow and guilt, connected by a chorus of raw anger.

***

The next day, it’s on YouTube, and all hell breaks lose.

Ally remembers telling Addison that yes, they absolutely should post it—it’s raw, it’s authentic, and it’s the kind of collaboration that gets five million views, which both Ally’s and Arlene’s careers could use.

In the cold, gray light of early afternoon, Ally listens to the things she had the nerve to sing last night and feels sick—not because she disavows any of it, but because there’s a part of her, located between the spleen and the liver, that wishes it weren’t so true.

_That’s exactly how I feel, how did you understand, thank you._

_You saved my life this morning._

_Three of my favorite musicians all together, and you’re amazing._

_Is this about Jackson Maine? How dare you desecrate his memory this way? He made you what you are. You don’t deserve to have fans._

_This is the most amazing song. I didn’t think anyone would ever understand how I feel._

The ones acting as if Jack needs defending from her, she wants to punch. The ones treating her as a hero, she wants to run from. This song isn’t the kind of brave where you accept a medal. It’s the kind of brave where you want to curl up and cry until you’re dehydrated, but somehow, you don’t.

***

At sunset, Ally takes a selfie against the fiery clouds and settles down to write an Instagram post.

_Your response to “Face the Change” overwhelms me. I will never get used to how my words can touch so many people, and that’s a good thing._

_There are fans who’ve asked if it’s about Jack and, if so, how I can say such things about the man who loved me and gave me my first opportunity. The answer is hard for me, but it’s really simple. I can say these things because they’re true._

_Jack loved me and gave me confidence to get my voice heard. He also humiliated me when I accepted my first Grammy, lied to me about his sobriety, refused to accept that my music was authentic if it didn’t fit his idea of authentic music, and derided any change to my image that he didn’t make. When my management told me that he couldn’t accompany me on tour because he was too much of a liability, I canceled the remainder of my tour. Jack nonetheless chose to end his life while I was playing the final show of that tour, as if to brand me for life with the fear that I’d destroyed him by putting my career above our relationship—even though I had just made an enormous sacrifice for the sake of that relationship. Even though his conduct in that relationship was actively harming my career. Even though I forgave him again and again. Even though I married him instead of insisting that he clean up his act first._

_I was never going to be able to sacrifice enough to keep Jack sober and alive._

_I value what he did for me and cherish the good times we had together. Those are forever part of who I am._

_This man also tried to do me incalculable and permanent psychological damage. That is also forever part of who I am._

_That’s the truth. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here with me through this long crazy rid of making music. And thank you to Addison Flyte and Arlene Jane for becoming my collaborators, my confessors, and my friends._

***

By the time _Maine Event: Country Music Remembers Jackson Maine_ is released in mid-February, everything that could be said on Medium and Jezebel about Ally Maine’s controversial post has been said, debated, and forgotten.

Addison Flyte is dating the dashing head of a hedge fund that specializes in gig-economy start-ups. Arlene Jane is in Vancouver, shooting a Hallmark movie that features her as a struggling singer-songwriter. And Ally Maine has gotten used to the routine of _Sing For Your Life._

Even an episode devoted to the songs of Jackson Maine doesn’t phaze her. Much.

Jason Schiavone’s yearning take on “Maybe It’s Time” comes just near enough to making her cry that she’s sure the camera pulls in a close-up. There’s no nonsense about moving the stress from syllable to syllable—he sings it like a man who knows change is hard but means to try.

“That was beautiful. How do you feel about eating slugs?” The early rounds have cheap and easy physical challenges that have been working their way up from being covered in slime. If it’s not slugs, it’ll be termites.

His expression is so bland, she’s not sure he’d _have_ one if it wasn’t for that nose so perfect that her hand rises to her own nose every time she thinks about it. “We eat raw oysters in Rhode Island. How bad could it be?”

 _Flirt with him,_ whispers the voice in her ear. _There’s a double-entendre in their somewhere. Make the audience get hot and bothered._

“You’ll do fine, then,” she says, and gives the _look_ to Briarly Benson that makes it _his_ problem to come up with banter.

In the break to commercial, she has two minutes to change into jeans and a sequined shirt—both of which she was lucky to find in the moving boxes when she unpacked in the freshly painted pink bedroom of her new house in West Hollywood.

She and Kyle Townsend take the stage, back to back, to a patter of applause and a few random screeches. Holyoke Carter, the busiest and most aggressively dapper man in the entertainment industry, brings the show back from the commercial.

“Here to perform a special song from the new tribute album to country legend Jackson Maine. . . our own judges, Ally Maine and Kyle Townsend, performing ‘Diggin’ My Grave.’”

When the time comes in the song to turn and meet Kyle’s eyes, to sing it to him, the laughter in his eyes isn’t Jack’s laughter. . . but it’s real. She meets it with laughter of her own, but the coiled anger that she never let lose when performing with Jack unwinds, makes her louder, makes her brighter. Kyle’s performance rises to meet hers, his fingers flying on the guitar strings.

It’s a flirtation, it’s an act, it’s a rebuke, it’s sheer joy in performing meeting raw rage. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wonders what the sort of stripped, mournful acoustic cover so popular with _Sing For Your Life_ contestants would make of the song.

Then they hit the last note and they’re done. She’s dripping in sweat, panting, grinning, grabbing Kyle’s hand to raise it in triumph. Addison and Arlene, in front row seats the cameras have _loved_ , are on their feet, applauding and hollering.

Behind her, the line of contestants is applauding and hooting, too. “Thank you,” she says before Holyoke can cue Brierly Benson’s banter on how she and Kyle were in it to win it or whatever.

“Thank you. Whatever hoops we make you jump through—and we’re probably literally going to make you jump through hoops by Top Six—don’t ever forget what you felt here, right now. Because that’s the truth of the music. It’s here to say things to you and to change you, and when you pick up that microphone or that guitar or whatever, you’re saying you’re willing to be that for people. That’s your lifeline, Don’t ever let go of that.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can have some fun here with "spot the expys." Not all of the OCs are versions of real people, and the few that are, are meant to be fairly obvious. If you can guess who Jason Schiavone is based on, you can also find on that person's Facebook a cover of "Maybe It's Time" in the style described in the story.
> 
> Sing For Your Life is a long-time joke of mine, that reality singing shows like American Idol were eventually going to merge with Fear Factor, and aspiring musicians would have to both win the public vote for singing and eat slugs.


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